Two things to note from this: I was absolutely exhausted and I miss my gear. The final sets of sumo had decent speed on them, but my groove still feels weird raw compared to sumo. If I can get my gear back in time, I'm putting briefs back on next week so I can start working on pushing those numbers higher and to really start focusing on my pulls.

I did not have my A game tonight. Floor press went ok, but that was about all I had. I've been slacking on my nutrition lately and it caught up to me today. I know for a fact that last nights training carried over to tonight's effort and the volume that I've been doing lately is also slightly catching up to me. I'm going to gorge myself this weekend and hope for the best on Sunday.

Twenty plus working sets the night before is brutal man. Do you purposely plan floor presses after a session like that since your lower body was probably beat up? Just curious if that goes into the thought process.

Twenty plus working sets the night before is brutal man. Do you purposely plan floor presses after a session like that since your lower body was probably beat up? Just curious if that goes into the thought process.

Although I don't follow conjugate anymore, I noticed that there is a lot of validity to constantly changing main lifts.

Definitely. Seems like there are just too many good exercises to stay the same and become stagnant. Part of the reason why trying to program as a novice can be mind numbing. You want to do all of these exercises and there tons of variations yet don't actually know which ones are actually gonna help your bench/squat/dead. That is where I was when I tried to program myself when I first realized I wanted to strength train/compete.

My hips gave out on me tonight. I did a very thorough warmup, but couldn't get my psoas to loosen up and I couldn't keep squatting without a lot of pain. My glutes are really tight along with my right hip flexor, which is most likely a result of the psoas tightness. When I did the AbD/AdD, my hips felt better, but this is going to take awhile to fully correct.

Geared, no, but this raw **** is awful. I've been doing Oly stance on squat as to keep the load off of my hips and planned to do conventional pulls for this reason. It's the little things that I neglected that are coming back to bit me in the ass.

Geared, no, but this raw **** is awful. I've been doing Oly stance on squat as to keep the load off of my hips and planned to do conventional pulls for this reason. It's the little things that I neglected that are coming back to bit me in the ass.

Sucks man. Get your ass back into some gear haha I gave sumo a shot the other day and it just felt odd, like I had no power off the floor.

Sucks man. Get your ass back into some gear haha I gave sumo a shot the other day and it just felt odd, like I had no power off the floor.

What's your normal warmup?

I roll out with a baseball and then my extra firm Rumble Roller. Then I move on to TKEs and mobility work. I added in some band trunk rotations to try to loosen the abs, but they didn't help out too much.

I may also be hitting a wall physically as this is the second consecutive session that has sucked.

I'm having a lot of the same issues right now. I've neglected some mobility and smr and when that's combined w a new desk job you get pain. I've got a painfully tight R hip flexor and I've been getting ridiculous back pain which I would imagine is exacerbated by my APT. Good luck getting back on track

I'm having a lot of the same issues right now. I've neglected some mobility and smr and when that's combined w a new desk job you get pain. I've got a painfully tight R hip flexor and I've been getting ridiculous back pain which I would imagine is exacerbated by my APT. Good luck getting back on track

This has been an issue since at least Fall '09 for me. It comes and goes and I'm fairly sure that the raw sumo work has exacerbated this right now along with the aforementioned lack of MFR and transverse ab work. I'm going to throw in an extra core day on Friday's, which will still give me a day off before my ME on Sunday's.

It looks like I was a bit premature in my assessment of needing a deload. OHP was the best that it's been in awhile and I added 2 more reps to my Kroc row PR. The next highest DB they have is 200lbs and I'm not sure that my hips and core are ready to tackle that at this moment. What I'm going to try to do is add some chains to the 145lb DB to add some variety. I'm going to attempt to pull tomorrow evening, but I'll be doing so in my suit if I can get it back. If not, I'll be using some loose Viking briefs.

The hip is feeling better, but is still at maybe 50%. Luckily, I received my briefs that I ordered earlier than expected and I was able to pull. I can tell that my mobility is getting better just by the groove that I felt while pulling. Nothing was near a max rep set as I was mainly looking to work my technique and adjust to the briefs. I'm shirting up on Friday as I am about 10 weeks out and it's time to start training for the meet.

Being back in a shirt felt so damn weird. Part of it is that I've recomped and my arms are a tad bigger, but most of the struggle was from my lack of leg drive. It wasn't too bad, but I was lacking drive at the bottom of the press and I couldn't get a solid base under me. Still, it wasn't anything terrible for a first session back and I have 10 weeks until the meet. It's way too early in the process to even start to plan numbers, but I do have a goal of hitting 455ish by the end of the year.

First squat session back in some gear and it felt great. I still did it closer to accumulation style since I want to give myself a couple of weeks to adjust to the spinal compression and new briefs. That being said, I flew out of the hole and had more weight and reps in me on this day. The reason I held back was primarily my hip issue, which didn't bother me today, and the fact I am still almost 10 weeks away. The plan is 2-3 more weeks of briefs, a deload, and then adding the suit.

After this, I can tell that my legs aren't completely back underneath me as I didn't have the same pop that I usually do and had to muscle the weight up more than normal. I've also implemented some of the techniques that Donnie Thompson showed us at the meet regarding humeral health and mobility and I can already tell a huge difference. Although my muscular endurance is down a lot, I can already tell a difference in recovery between sets.

One word: volume. I am still ramping up my volume to keep my work capacity as high as possible. My numbers are climbing, my upper body feels great, and I'm having a solid recomp along the way. No PRs on this day, but my numbers on OHP and DB press are the highest they've been in probably six months and I noticed that my shirt was tighter than the last time I wore it. There's still a lot of things that can change between now and the meet, but I definitely didn't feel this great last time I got back into gear.

First time pulling anything over 500 since the meet and it felt great. 565 came up a bit slow for my liking and I probably shouldn't have gone that high, but it was smooth and felt good in my hands. I'm going to go anti-Westside for this training cycle and pull 80%+ every other week alternating with speed work to keep work capacity high. My hip is much better than this time last week and I'm starting to feel dialed in for the next couple of months.